Despite the preventative measures implemented by IT departments, it will happen at some point: servers will go down and outages will occur. But even if an organization cannot prevent these issues from occurring, the impact can still be minimized through the use of information gathered by server monitoring services. What exactly is server monitoring? Basic functions include:

When it comes to provisioning themselves with expert IT support, Philadelphia businesses are increasingly migrating to the SaaS or Software as a Service model. This change in approach brings with it a range of powerful benefits.

Despite the preventative measures implemented by IT departments, it will happen at some point: servers will go down and outages will occur. But even if an organization cannot prevent these issues from occurring, the impact can still be minimized through the use of information gathered by server monitoring services. What exactly is server monitoring? Basic functions include:

Tracking CPU usage, memory, and disk usage

Monitoring the performance and availability of all critical systems and applications

Determining where the issues lie and address them before it is too late

Configuring thresholds and broadcast notifications when these thresholds have been crossed

An organization can monitor their server details using SaaS server monitoring or a managed service. Even though they both have a similar end result (ideally), there are several differences between them that can determine which option is better for a business.

A managed service provider provides a software license for each application they are required to run and are responsible for running the software, maintaining it, and installing any necessary upgrades. This model places day-to-day operations with another organization, and thereby creates a strategic method for streamlined, efficient, and affordable operations.

With SaaS server monitoring, the cost for a SaaS application can often be much less than for a managed service application. However, an organization will be charged for the configuration, maintenance and support, seamless upgrades, and customization that a managed service provider generally offers inclusively. A SaaS supplier hosts, maintains, and upgrades its software on its own servers while an organization's employees access it through the Internet. Managed service providers allow for a more comprehensive and flexible operation of business functions, such as security and network monitoring.

Because SaaS applications are not necessarily sold as a software package that an IT department can download or purchase, a business cannot buy a license or or pay for upgrades. Instead, an organization will pay a flat, regularly scheduled, subscription fee. The software resides on the host server from which all users — no matter their organization or where they are located — can access it. The cost is therefore spread across many clients.

Even though SaaS applications can be modified in minor ways — for example, companies can often make changes to how the application is shown and used on a desktop — the code itself cannot be customized for a business and their specific and unique needs, as can be done through a managed service provider.

Finally, an managed service provider (MSP) can provide additional services that SaaS server monitoring cannot, such as troubleshooting issues, providing data backup and storage, and offering server upgrade information. This can leave an IT department available to work on their own tasks and projects.

When weighing one set of server management services against the other, a business will need to consider how integral the software required is to your organization. Make sure that business-critical operational issues are acknowledged and addressed, including exceptions and multiple sources of information.

At iCorps, we offer a range of managed services, starting from the full network assessment to the deployment stage. Contact us for more details about managed server monitoring and other managed services.

Software-as-a-Service, or SaaS, is a way for businesses to use software that is hosted by a vendor, and that software is then delivered to users through a web browser on the Internet. That same software or piece of code can be used by many users, regardless of where they are located geographically. Because it can be very efficient and low-cost, SaaS has been growing in popularity over the past few years, but there are many thoughts - good and bad - that exist about it.

SaaS, or Software as a Service, has been increasing in usage and popularity recently. It has been around for a while and has changed over the past 15 years. Let's take a look at where it is and where its current path.

First of all: what is SaaS? It is a way that businesses and other interested groups use software that is hosted by its vendor, and that software is delivered to clients through a web browser on the Internet. That same software or piece of code can be used by many users, regardless of where they are situated geographically, because it is hosted in a central location by the vendor. Sometimes, SaaS has been called remotely hosted or on-demand, and earlier on, the software was provided by an ASP (Application Service Provider).

Back in the later 1990s, businesses started using ASP for some of its software needs. However, ASP usage started fizzling out due to its one-to-one architecture, which meant that only businesses with a certain structure could use it, and that same architecture made it difficult for the software to be as flexible as businesses needed it to be.

Based on the needs of potential clients, the original ASP slowly developed into SaaS. Vendors adapted the current technology model to handle a one-to-many architecture, and this, along with other advancements, started making SaaS faster and more flexible. With these changes, those who thought SaaS would also fizzle were wrong – SaaS started to gain a hold in the market, but mostly for small and mid-sized companies.

In the 2000s, as SaaS started to grow, vendors started providing more offerings. But with advancements and flexibility come issues. Clients started to have fears about security – was their data secure, were their networks safe from hacking?

Once again, SaaS providers responded. Not only did they implement greater security mechanisms, but SaaS was commonly used as an anti-virus and anti-spam solution itself. Currently, SaaS has become more customizable and with availability 24/7. It is a great benefit to all because it has no infrastructure costs, no human capital, and it is less risky because less maintenance is needed. Because it is more scalable, it still is well suited for smaller and mid-sized companies.

So what does all of this mean for the technological future of SaaS? Firstly, there are signs that it is becoming more popular: it is continually being updated to be more customizable and available as needed. Additionally, it is verging It is also trying to become more platform independent.

SaaS is also being implemented as part of a cloud computing model, which means no more software to download and install, no hard drive issues as the work is distributed across a set of virtual machines, greater use and efficiency of existing resources, reduced costs, better internal and external service, and reduced maintenance costs. With these benefits, SaaS could gain a greater foothold and possibly expand into non-US markets and possibly being embraced by larger organizations too. Still, as with all businesses, the need for greater security to alleviate concrete fears is ever-present, particularly when your organization is not in physical control of its data.

Is SaaS a business model that is right for your company? If you need more information, contact a reputable IT company like iCorps. They can assess your current business model to determine if SaaS is a solution that fits with your current business structure and future strategies.

A few worrying financial reports just produced by Microsoft suggest at first sight that they may be losing their grip on the desktop. Coming in the same week as their announcement of the latest updates to their Office suite, you might think that the timing could not have focused any more attention on the product line. A closer look at the financial situation however reveals a slightly different story. If you look at their revenue, you’ll see that they have continued to increase at a steady four percent but their results were hit by two items that had been previously announced – one relating to funding upgrades for Windows 8 and the other related to its acquisition of aQuantive as part of its development of online services.

Cashed-strapped IT departments are always looking out for ways to increase efficiency while cutting costs simultaneously. Larger organizations with bigger budgets can adopt new IT technologies with higher price tags, however, companies in survival mode often can't. Small companies are often unable to secure financing to invest large sums of cash on high-end IT technology.

Cloud computing is one of the most exciting tech breakthroughs to come along in quite some time. Unlike some leaps forward that are really only of benefit to firms with revenues in the hundreds of millions of dollars, cloud computing seems almost tailor-made to provide the SMB with advantages that were never before possible, like economies of scale, which until now were more or less ruled out for small businesses. There is only really one hitch for the small business owner or manager: being hooked into a cloud computing system.

A relatively new approach to meeting the computing needs of a small or medium-sized business is the phenomenon known as "Software as a Service", most commonly referred to as SaaS. In the SaaS approach, businesses connect with the software they need via cloud computing. This frees them from the necessity to install and maintain their own software. Instead, those responsibilities are handed over to a managed services provider contracted to keep the software updated and maintained.

Managed services have become such a standard approach to reliable and consistent IT solutions that companies as large as Blue Cross / Blue Shield of Minnesota are now using SaaS (Software as a Service) to accomplish the core competency of claims processing. There is more to managed services, however, than meets the eye. A comprehensive approach to providing IT services from a remote location will include technological feats that most businesses are not well positioned to do for themselves. These advanced uses of managed services include deep packet analysis and netflow analysis.

Contrary to popular belief, cloud based computing and virtualization is not the same thing. Instead, cloud computing is a set of technologies that can build on top of virtualization in order to make better use of virtualized resources. At its heart, the adoption of a cloud-based architecture allows IT services to be provisioned across business networks on an as needed basis. When such services and resources are not needed by one user in a business, they can be allocated to others since the essence of cloud computing is shared resources.

The rise of SaaS, or software as a service, has meant that businesses no longer have to store rarely used data on site. Instead, they can offshore it to the cloud, thereby freeing up valuable infrastructure resources on the premises for data that is accessed far more frequently. Security experts, however, recommend that companies carefully analyze businesses offering managed services before they offshore certain kinds of data to the cloud.

There is no doubt that Software as a Service, also known as SaaS, can help small and medium-sized businesses to improve the use of business intelligence tools. These tools consist of programs that assist managers to use data modeling to identify trends that are relevant to the bottom line. These may include trends among customer preferences and behavior as well as trends related to employees and workflow. Such tools can be implemented as part of a managed services approach, a model that uses hosted IT solutions in order to eliminate much of the physical infrastructure, including software disks that companies used to have to maintain on their own premises.